......So, just how bad is the Orange County District Attorney’s office?

If you’re following what’s happening at Capo USD and in Costa Mesa, the only conclusion you can reach is that Tony Rackauckas would be lucky to find his ass with both hands.

Last week, the Orange County District Attorney’s office received additional setbacks in their fruitless prosecution of the former Capistrano Unified Superintendent and his assistant. As the last remaining charges were dropped against James Fleming, an appellate court also issue a stinging rebuke of the DA in the case against Fleming’s assistant, Susan McGill:

A panel of three appellate justices ruled Wednesday that it appears McGill may be the victim of prosecutorial misconduct….

The justices said it appeared prosecutors “deliberately tried to mislead this court” by declaring they were not aware of the potentially exculpatory evidence.

The appellate justices have given the District Attorney’s Office until May 17 to respond.

This court believes that fundamental fairness and due process require that the District Attorney’s office be given the opportunity to “explain away” what appears, at least on first blush, to be a pretty damning case of hiding exculpatory evidence from the grand jury, then the trial court, and finally this court,” the justices wrote in their ruling.

“This court is reluctant to come to the conclusion that prosecutorial misconduct has occurred in this case and hopes that the district attorney’s office can give us an explanation which will absolve the relevant members of the district attorney’s office of any taint of misconduct.”

As the DA’s office refused to comment on this story, they simultaneously launched a media blitz with sadly misguided charges against the Capistrano Unified School District, this time for violating open meeting laws.

Register anti-education writer Scott Martindale greedily swallowed the shiny diversionary bait placed in front of him, with a long and deeply-flawed regurgitation of the DA’s new charges.

While the alleged violations of the Brown Act had been addressed in depth by the board in their March 16th “cure and correct” meeting, the DA, petulantly claimed that the Board also had to admit that they were wrong, and announced that “we can’t sit idly by while there are violations of the Brown Act.”

What? The DA’s office can’t sit idly by when there are violations of the Brown Act? Since when?

Does anyone remember the whining report by the DA “vindicating” the outlaw Orange County Fair Board? The DA couldn’t find any violations of any laws as Dave Ellis and his cronies violated not only every open government law, but a slew of other laws. An annotated version of that report now deconstructs their work line by line.

There’s a clear conclusion that the DA’s office either doesn’t understand open meeting laws or uses them very selectively.

We wrote about it April 11th as the Costa Mesa City Council began following the same tactics used by the Fair Board to hide their actions from public view.

Meanwhile, back in Costa Mesa…

While the D.A. sits idly by, an independent nonprofit, Californians Aware noted exactly the type of Brown Act violations that we did, promised legal action if the Costa Mesa City Council continued to violate the state open meeting laws through their “Working Groups”

Please take the necessary steps to see that the Working Groups begin immediately to comply with the Brown Act. And please consider that the Council’s failure to do so will result in my recommendation to our Litigation Committee that we seek the appropriate court order(s) to ensure such compliance.

Where’s Tony Rackauckas, our elected District Attorney? Is he going to ignore the violations of open meetings laws by the City of Costa Mesa, and simultaneously waste taxpayer dollars abetting two dissident trustees at CUSD ? Will T-Rack sit idly by as Righeimer and Mensinger defy legitimate public record requests for emails?

Damn, T-Rack’s assistants are petulant and incompetent.

They can’t be bothered interviewing witnesses like Dave Padilla at the Fair Board or the current Superintendent at Capo. They didn’t follow up on Dick Ackerman’s billing records or follow the paper trail as the Fair Board hid hundreds of thousands of dollars in false claims.

What about the District Attorney himself?

Is he even interested, or is he just another highly paid public employee waiting out his time until he can collect his pension, and relying on Susan Kang Schroeder and his assistants to speak for him?

Should we expect another media blitz from Schroeder, pictured here with her husband, Republican power broker Mike Schroeder?

And what of the “Watchdogs” at our local third-rate daily?

Appellate Justice Eileen C. Moore noted a “backdrop of political intrigue and purported cover-ups” at the DA’s office in a stinging critique of the DA’s office.

Will the Register ever notice that anything is awry?

Or will the political reporters at the Register continue their slavish defense of Orange County Republicans as they ally with OC Republican party boss Scott Baugh in his relentless war against public employees ?

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Update: Ministry of Propaganda Non-Responds

Short version: We promise we are going to respond pretty soon, as soon as we figure out what to say, but the Budget Working Group’s mission is accomplished and they will not meet again. It only took twelve secret meetings to wreak havoc on Costa Mesa.

About Mayor Quimby

19 Comments

You’re so right, Quimby. TonyR clearly goes after Brown Act violations only when it suits him (or his Republican overlords). Huge ongoing violations are ignored while minor ones are dragged through the press.

It’s all a matter of whether Democrats or “bad” Republicans are involved. Republican electeds who toe the line are left to their own devices.

The Liberal OC’s Prevatt has documented an ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY of Brown Act violations by the Santa Ana City Council – maybe the Claudia connection is just the Teflon that was needed.

Last week or so, I stood on a high floor of the Devereaux “Justice” Building, looking down through some plexi-glass, and a CPS victim pointed out various blondes click-clacking their heels across the lower floors: “That’s one of Tony Rackauckas’ girlfriends. Oh, that one too.” What’s the guy’s secret?

I have a source that tells me that T-Rack has an lavicious appetite for drugs (spec. marijuana and cocaine) while acting like he’s tough on crime. And where does he get the drugs? From his dealers in the OC Sheriff’s “evidence room.”

Look for some subdued fireworks coming up as the DA releases the findings of last years murder of Julian Collender, by the Brea PD.

Buzz is that the department and DA reresentitives consulted on how best to handle the controversy with “experienced official”. The first step was: delay, delay delay. Followed by the retirement of Billy Hutchins, police chief. Installation of a new insider. In addition, Yorba Linda council took some steps to seperate them.

Now the whitewashed report will come out, but largely exonerate the officer (who was imediately put back on duty and name never released). They’ll explain steps have been taken to improve the system, the chief retired………………

It’s amazing that the DA hasn’t finished a report on the Collender shooting of an unarmed man with a high powered rifle. That event happened June 30,2010. I guess their investigators are too busy talking to the press about spurious Brown Act violations in Capo.

Interesting to see what their new “transparency” policy will mean for both Julian Collender and Caesar Cruz’s quest for justice by their loved ones. It’s been over a year and a half and still no information for Cruz’s family either.

You are willing to “overlook” serious violations of the Brown Act, which from my review have been repeated and continuing with CVUSD, as “no big deal?” The fact that they have had repeated “corrective” meetings to cure the defects is pretty good evidence that even they acknowledge the problems with the conduct of their meetings. Funny that you are willing to forgive serious violations of the law when it helps make your point. Repeated violations of the Brown Act undermine open government in California.

And why are you putting quote marks around “overlook” and “no big deal”?

I don’t know what happened behind closed doors, but there’s a lot that shows up in the public record.

I’m not buying the whole deal with repeated violations of the Brown Act by the current board. They said they were going to discuss labor negotiations in closed session, and they discussed the contract. They didn’t make any changes to the current contract negotiated by the previous board, which triggered raises automatically when new revenues came in. They reported that they took no action.

When two trustees decided to take issue with this and allege Brown Act violations, the board went over all of this in great detail at the public meeting on March 16th.

So where are the serious violations of the Brown Act that you allege?

What justifies the over-the-top allegations by the DA and his insistence that the trustees not only take corrective action, but also admit guilt, a remedy which is nowhere in the Brown Act?

He whitewashed Ackerman, and we now know that was baloney. The DA’s top guy – some tool named Feccia – said no evidence was found implicating Ackerman. But did they even bother looking? Of course not. Then the billing records came to light and Ackerman was busted lobbying legislators.

On my home turf, Rackaukas endorsed Roland Chi for City Council – despite the fact that serial and willful violations of the health code resulted in Chi’s having to give his DNA in a “spit and acquit” deal.

Feccia conducted the whitewash of the Fair Board and Dick Ackerman. And my first run-in with him was listening to him give a dozen lame reasons that T-Rack had to fire Todd Spitzer, when we all know it was because Todd asked the wrong questions of John Williams’ office / T-Rack’s fiancee, and that T-Rack was now safely past the time that Todd could challenge him for office.